Flanagan receives 2008 silver in stride
Shalane Flanagan already had her moment. Now she has her medal.
Without ceremony or fanfare, Flanagan got her silver medal for the 10,000 meters from the 2008 Beijing Games, with a U.S. Olympic Committee representative delivering it to her home Monday in Oregon.
That her acceptance of the medal, which was upgraded from bronze after Turkey’s Elvan Abeylegesse failed a doping test, came in low-key fashion was Flanagan’s choice.
The USOC offered to hold a ceremony for her, Flanagan said, but she didn’t feel like she needed one.
“To be honest, I talked to my family and my coach, and I said, ‘Well, what’s important to you guys?’ ” she said last week. “Because I had my moment in Beijing. And the thing is, it was a wonderful moment. I have no regrets about it. I have the fondest memories of that experience, of being in that stadium. I actually don’t feel the need to change it, that experience. I got to stand on a podium.”
As retesting of samples has rewritten athletics history books, reallocation of medals has often come without the recognition athletes would have received during the Olympics. Perhaps most famously, American shot putter Adam Nelson received his gold medal from the 2004 Olympics, which was awarded after Ukrainian Yuriy Bilonog ’s urine sample was positive in retesting, at the Atlanta airport in 2013.
Flanagan got her medal two years after she learned a retest of Abeylegesse’s sample from the 2007 world championships tested positive for steroids. The Turkish runner claimed silver in the Beijing race with Flanagan taking bronze. After the retest, the International Association of Athletics Federations in March gave Abeylegesse a twoyear suspension and stripped her results from August 2007 to
2009.
Flanagan, 36, has been a vocal athlete against doping as her sport has been mired in doping scandals. Most notably, two investigations commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency in the last two years found widespread and state-sponsored doping in Russia.
The IAAF has yet to lift its ban of the country’s athletics association, one that dates to November
2015. And the International Olympic Committee continues its inquiries into individual and systemic doping cases that were detailed in a December report from Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren.
Like many athletes, Flanagan faces the doubts about the competitions she enters.
“It’s really hard. I feel like I’ve worked really diligently over the last seven years trying to prove myself as a marathoner to the world and to myself,” she said. “I can honestly say, I don’t feel like I’ve had a fair shot.”
The four-time Olympian pointed to the 2012 London Olympics, from which nearly 20 Russian and Eastern European track and field athletes have been sanctioned after positive retests.
“I can constantly look at races I’ve competed in and just go back, well, geez,” she said. “I definitely have had some really low moments and just like, why do I keep doing this? But I keep on thinking if I persevere long enough, my time will come.”